Chuck Bloom is a former publisher-owner-editor of several Texas community newspapers for more than 25 years before retiring, winning dozens of journalism awards and serving as former president of two regional press groups.

Wednesday, December 05, 2012

Another year of bowl game overload

They make office polls for the NCAA Men’s
Basketball Tournament draw but almost no one attempts to sweep through the
holiday period when the BCS bowl game schedule is unveiled. It should be a
college football junkie’s dreamscape – to have the remote locked on ESPN and
see more football than an advance scout.

But there are problems, as usual, to the choices. First,
and as always, there are just too many damn bowl games! I can’t think of ANY
one, other than Vegas bookies, which cares one iota about the Belk Bowl, or if
Duke even fields a football team. There are 35 post-season bowl games this
season and by January 1, there’s a good chance you will need new glasses if you
plan to see all the action. It’s simply waters down the competition because
college football has a tapeworm inside its internal workings – unable to resist
any company wanting to slap its moniker to some matchup in some stadium.

Once the overabundance of these games is firmly
established, there are several other factors at play in this season’s bowl
matchups to be discussed:

No, no
No. Illinois –
Regardless of a 12-1 record, putting the Huskies into a prime time BCS bowl
game is not a stroke of inspiration; it is an insult to the other conferences
NOT named the SEC. Primarily, a team like Oklahoma, which actually tied for the
Big 12 title with Kansas State, would have been a far superior opponent for
Florida State in the Orange Bowl. This is big boy college football, not the
Equal Opportunity Agency.

Seriously, name ONE quality opponent Northern
Illinois defeated in 2012! NIU lost to Iowa in the opener and only beat a lousy
Army team (by one point) and Kansas (the only Big 12 NOT to earn a bowl berth).
A BCS berth should be reserved for QUALITY teams who have come through a season
of hard games and tough tests – Northern Illinois fails to qualify on both
accounts.

Victims
of its own success/hype – Sorry to all those Southeastern Conference fans and schools, but the
rules state only TWO schools from one conference can obtain BCS spots; the SEC
had six of the top 10 teams in a majority of the final polls. So … that means
excellent teams get “stuck” in seemingly lackluster consolation bowls (such as
LSU in the Chick-Fil-A, or former Peach Bowl).

The problem this year was the elevation of Florida
past Georgia simply because the Bulldogs fought tooth-and-nail before falling
to Alabama in the SEC title game. The setback dropped Georgia to fourth in the
BCS behind idle Florida; a complete miscarriage of sports justice (those who
watched the game know exactly how close a contest it was). Georgia got punished
for trying to win a spot in the BCS championship by missing the Elite Eight in
its entirety.

So its booby prize is facing Nebraska, a squad that
choked SO badly, it allowed a lousy Wisconsin to hang 70 points on its
“vaunted” defense.

Draw a
line in the sand – It
should be illegal/improper/unbearable to allow ANY team at 6-6 to play in a
post-season contest. A bowl game was meant, once upon a time, as a reward for a
season’s effort; now the 70 vacancies require that conference dip deep into
mediocrity to fill commitments. This year, there are 11 schools that should be
watching the post-season from their choices (… and yes, that includes Sparty
and Central Michigan); it would also mean almost six games less to blur the
brain and eyeballs.

Purdue was so ashamed of its season, head coach
Danny Hope got fired because at 6-6, it wasn’t good enough. YET … it was just
fine and dandy to get the Boilermakers into the Heart of Dallas Bowl at the
“real” Cotton Bowl against another classic underachiever, Oklahoma State (7-5).

And, excuse me! But how in the hell did Georgia
Tech, at 6-7, get anything but a trip to The Varsity Drive-In in Atlanta???
Again, it’s a sham selection.

Too many
games, too many duplications – No city should hoist more than one game, other
than the BCS championship and even then, it should be that city’s bowl
namesake. Sorry, but San Diego, you need to choose between the Holiday and
Poinsettia Bowls; the same goes for New Orleans and Orlando.

Play
football in football places – In three cases, bowl games are slated to be held where football
NEVER sees the light of day – Tropicana Field, AT&T Park, Yankee Stadium;
one stadium, essentially empty for 364 days has been recruited for meaningless
games (RFK Stadium in D.C.) will host the Military Bowl between two
non-military teams (San Jose State and Bowling Green). Since the game is in
Washington, there will be LOTS of lobbyists working the crowd in favor of their
favorite defense contractor, such as sponsor Northrup Grumman. How nice!

Fear the
Blue Potato Bowl – Poor
Utah State! Its 10-2 record should have earned a nice trip out of town, or the
state of Utah, but, no … the bizarrely named Famous Idaho Potato Bowl needs a
local draw against Toledo so the Aggies will play on their rival’s ugly blue
carpet surface in Boise, instead of some place with … sunshine and warmth. Bowl
games need to stop punishing in-state schools because the normal matchup
process won’t excite the local fan base enough to produce butts in the seats
(Central Florida playing in St. Petersburg, Central Michigan in Detroit,
Louisiana-Monroe in Shreveport, as examples).

Games are
played on the field –
Someone needs to ask the BCS people, or whoever is responsible for the actual
pairings, if they have EVER seen half of these schools play, especially in the
second half of the regular season. If that WAS the case, Minnesota would never
have been invited anywhere and certainly never paired in the Meineke Car Care
Bowl in Houston (the old Texas/Astro-Bluebonnet/Bluebonnet Bowl) against a
high-powered offense like Texas Tech. Aside from Indiana, Minnesota was
actually one of the worst teams in the Big 10 at the end of the 2012 season.

Going old
school names – What was
wrong with the OLD names for many of these games? The Chick-Fil-A Bowl is the old
Peach Bowl, which makes more sense since Georgia is the Peach State and the
main drag is Peachtree Avenue. The Sheraton Hawaii Bowl was, for years, the
Hula Bowl; the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl was originally the Cherry Bowl; the
Outback Bowl used to be the Hall of Fame Bowl and the Capital One Bowl is the
former Tangerine Bowl, which first kicked off in 1947! I’d rather have the games
follow the stadium names, as was done in the good old days (Cotton, Rose,
Orange, Sun, Tangerine, Gator).

First up,
first down – For Michigan
fans, it might be to take a couple of moments to watch the lidlifter in
Albuquerque and to root for the Wolf Pack of Nevada to add to Rich Rodriguez’s
post-season blues in the New Mexico Bowl. RichRod’s Arizona squad faltered down
the stretch (a familiar refrain, anyone?) and it will simply be fun to root
against the man who set the program in Ann Arbor back a few years.

Michigan has the most unique perspective towards
the national championship game of ANY team in the nation. Not only did the
Wolverines play both, on the road (and lost) but also faced the number
three-ranked team in the AP (Ohio State). In fact, aside from Iowa, Illinois
and UMass, every U-M opponent earned a bowl bid.

The Irish, despite SIX Michigan turnovers, could’ve
lost the 13-6 outcome to Michigan, but escaped. There is NO escaping Alabama’s
speed, talent and offensive line. It will be a double-figured victory for Roll
Tide.

Michigan, for itself, will be involved in one of
the three best matchups of the bowl season (Cotton and Fiesta being the others)
and might have to play for conference pride as only Northwestern could be
considered a viable choice to win over Mississippi State.

The strengths and problems for the Wolverines will
still be in place – lack of a consistent running game and the unknown status of
Denard Robinson as a passer. This will be a game-winning field goal outcome in
the making with … Michigan winning 27-24.

But be smart about your bowl game viewing to avoid
the chance to simply having your head explode from ESPN Bowl Week overload.